8.13.2021

It's Friday -- Let's Get Out of Here

at 2:30 PM

Random Friday Morning Thoughts




Topical.  

  • Still rising. 

  • If my Bridgeport ISD book-learning hasn't failed me, 44.7% of all Texans vaccinated computes to 53.8% of all eligible Texans being vaccinated. That also equates to 11.1 million Texans who are old enough to get vaccinated but have not. Incredible. 

  • This is wild. The government in Texas, the TABC specifically, is actually threatening a private business with retaliation for requiring its customers to have a vaccination in order to enter. What exactly is a "conservative" these days? 

  • Detailed Census details were released yesterday. Tidbits:
    • Wise County numbers:

    • In Texas, it's dead even between Whites and Hispanics, 39.8% to 39.3%. (10 years ago it  was Whites with 45.3% and Hispanics at 37.6%)
    • The truth behind the shift is that Whites aren't repopulating in Texas very quickly. In Texas, they just increased in numbers in the last 10 years by a measly 187,252.  By comparison, Hispanics increased by 1,980,796 in 10 years.  That's the real story. 
    • But that is not as crazy as the nationwide reproduction rate for Whites. For the first time since 1790, the number of Whites fell overall from the number ten years previously by losing 5.1 million people (despite Texas' modest addition). Simply put, more Whites are dying in America than being born.

    • Where the city limits are drawn has a lot to do with the following numbers. 

    • Wichita Falls lost 10,000 people. That's a trend nationwide as rural areas saw a decrease in population while the big cities and their suburbs rapidly increased.
    • Fun fact:

  • The Taliban has now taken Kandahar in the last 24 hours. They U.S. better get our embassy evacuated or we are going to have another Saigon at best and an Iranian hostage situation at worst. (To be clear, I support the pulling of all troops out of Afghanistan and have been advocating for it for over a decade as evidenced above. This end was inevitable unless we wanted a perpetual occupation.) 
    Yesterday

    Saigon.

  • Handcuffed man in Oklahoma led cops on a chase on a four-wheeler. For a while. Video link.


  • A real estate story in the Morning News today focuses on the rising prices of townhomes and condos which have even outpaced crazy single family home prices. It's in a hip area, but do you want to pay $260,000 for a 590 square foot condo in Uptown? It has a cool view but has a pull down bed. 

  • R.I.P. to the only Official Liberally Lean Baseball Player I have ever had.  What a wild career. An ultimate spare in Texas, traded to the Orioles where he had 4 years which any Hall of Famer would want, became filthy rich with a new contract, and then whose ability just fell off a cliff never to return. 

  • A faithful reader just sent me this which was found while cleaning out his grandmother's house. He thought I'd find it interesting, and I do.  A vaccination passport request back in 1918:

    "Dr. Evans, Smallpox has broken out here in the schools
    and my children have to have a certificate to show that they
    have been vaccinated for smallpox. Roy and Eva Fell. They
    can't go to school without and have to have it by Wednesday so
    please sent it at once and much oblige."
    Mrs. Ada Hoffman
    401 Andrew St.
    Winfield, Kansas

    • Just for fun, I had to look up that address. (I'm pretty sure the address above is 401 and not 408). History in America, with very rare exception, is eventually bulldozed away. 

  • Random Decatur ISD complaint I received yesterday: The air-conditioning in several rooms at Carson Elementary is atrocious and not a single lawn of any school had been mowed for opening day. 
  • Man, a lot of people dogged on Field of Dreams yesterday and it did my heart good. That being said, the players entrance for last night night's game was really great. Video.

  • Time which has passed since the Wise County Sheriff's Office has failed to solve the murder of Lauren Whitener in her home at Lake Bridgeport: 770 days.
  • Messenger: Above the Fold (with a pretty wild story of DNA and familial DNA tracing leading to a California killer from 40 years ago found in a grave in Wise County.)

at 8:32 AM

8.12.2021

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts




The Messenger was doing features on interesting people in Wise County back than and wrote one on Jim Marrs.  When I was re-watching the crazy "JFK" movie the other day, his name prominently showed up in the opening credits.    (I had highlighted the "all tell" in the story because there's no way that's true.) He died in 2017.

  • Last summer's peak was 10,893.

  • Clay Jenkins new county order is the biggest defiance of Gov. Abbott's edict yet because it's not a another governmental entity (like a school) telling the governor that they will require masks on its own government premises. Nope, it's a local governmental entity telling a private business to require masks. I'm actually torn when it goes that far. 

  • This is dumb. It isn't at all like Wendy Davis successfully running out the last 13 hours of the clock back in 2013. Right now there's still 25 days left in the current special session.

     
  • What a weird "official" update from the Cowboys.

  • You have to be ridiculously sloppy in data transfer in order for this to happen. If I had to guess, I bet its video files (bodycam and dashcams) and phone dumps that comprise the majority of the lost data.

  • The QAnon nuts always look normal.  And the story is as crazy as the headline. He also bought into the Illuminati stuff as well.  


  • I normally ignore Trump these days as he slips towards irrelevance, but this statement yesterday is really insane. He loved January 6th and thought it was justified (see use of the word "murdered). He wants a race war (see use of the worth "other side" in quotes no less). He wants another insurrection (see use of the words "cannot be allowed").  . And the chilling statement of "We know who is" invokes images of Hitler's night of the long knives. He was never good at hiding his Nazi tendencies, and he's not getting any better. 

  • I still predict some weird background information between the suspect and those in the victim's home is going to come out.  But so far I've heard nothing new. 

  • The Taliban has basically created a large circle around Kabul and there's a 100% chance it will be taken. Thus, it looks like we can officially update Bill Murray's line in Stripes where he tells his cohorts that we've been kicking arse for 200 years and we are "10 and 1."  Now make that a "2". (It really is amazing that that both the powerful Soviet Union and the United States have invaded a country full of nothing and can't hold it.) 

  • Sure they had to tear up a few pages where Tennessee took up arms against the United States because they were more faithful to money derived from slave trade but, you know, "exceptionalism" is relative. 

  • I repeat it again: Field of Dreams has a horrible conclusion and moral lesson. Let's take a magical place and turn it into an amusement park with a paid admission. I would be hard to write something worse. 

  • Related:

  • Why was the interim school superintendent for Decatur ISD openly bad mouthing the Messenger at the convocation? Isn't it normally the job on interims to calm the waters and steer the ship forward? 


at 8:31 AM

8.11.2021

Random Wednesday Morning Thoughts




The new Census data will actually be released tomorrow at noon so we'll find out. (Side note: That last
sentence in the old bullet point could have been worded much better.)   

  • I mentioned that the crazy actions of the majority of the Decatur School Board made the home page of the Star-Telegram yesterday. This morning, the story moves to the actual front page of the paper edition.  (Ms. Wren, who has an expression shared by many of you, is probably wondering why her picture ended up with the story when she hasn't voted for any of the controversial moves.) 

  • I was right about the Martin Marietta hit-and-run death in Chico which I mentioned yesterday. It's the top story in the Messenger today. 
  • The new number will be 10,041 for August 9th. We are going to smash the first surge top number, and last summer's all time peak is certainly not out of the question.   

  • Local impact.

  • The ISDs in Houston, Austin, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Dallas are all ignoring Gov. Abbott's "no mask" edict. 
  • Another Trump Insurrectionist from the Metroplex has been identified, but how they caught him is pretty interesting. 

  • Breaking Baylor news.  This has to be only the mildest sanctions after all the time that has passed, right? (And some of you are trying to remember what it was they did.)

  • Dateline: Waco. All of these cases are due to prosecutors filing the cases first before taking a real hard look at the evidence. It's a policy of "file first, ask questions later" which is all too common.

  • Link. 

  • This one is pretty interesting. The crowd is pretty loud outside and maybe that factored in on the owner/manager not seating them upon their second request, but the dress code excuse doesn't cut it after they exercised a little ingenuity. Instagram video.


  • Surprise change from yesterday: Sen. Cornyn voted against, not for, the infrastructure bill. There were 19 Republican senators voting for it, but he wasn't one of them.
  • Hard Knocks: Dallas Cowboys episode 1 mini-review: Pretty entertaining when it catches the audio of the reactions to Dak's minor (or major?) shoulder injury, I could watch Jerry all day long, Zeke is as dumb as a box of rocks, and there's way too much staged "comedy" (Zeke wrapping a present or stealing a bike should have been left on the cutting room floor). Oh, yeah, and the whole thing still has an NFL propaganda piece feel to it. 
  • I'm always looking out for how the new rule allowing college players to be paid for their name, image and likeness is going to play out, and we've got a pretty big deal announced this morning. (Unfortunately, Dr. Pepper didn't tell us what they were paying him.) But what a recruiting tool this is. "Hey, Mr. High School QB, the last guy that started for us got a check from Dr. Pepper for [$x] for just one day's work."

  • Well, I guess there are some things you can't ride out after all. 

  • Messenger: Above the Fold



at 8:29 AM
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